Design process: Woven Kisses edition

The quilt top for my scrappy test of the upcoming mystery quilt turned out really, really well.  Keeping it to myself a little bit longer is much more challenging than I anticipated.  I keep telling myself to not upload that photo just yet.

To temper that urge, I'll share an older finish, designed and made for the Fall/Winter 2023 Island Batik catalog.  

Woven Kisses by Canuck Quilter Designs
Fabric from Romance Garden, an Island Batik Signature Collection
by Kathy Engle for Sherry Shish of Powered by Quilting 

I really like the interlocking parts in the kiss block.  It's a pretty simple design, but it didn't show up in my head ready to drop into a grid layout and be a quilt.  I thought you might like a look at the design journey.  I looked back into my EQ file to see how the design evolved.  You'll notice there was some backtracking involved.  

Did you recognize my Cosmic Cloud in there?  It was the blue one halfway through.  It cropped up partway when I made a certain choice, but there was still a kernel of another idea there so I went back later and explored another direction until Woven Kisses showed up.

I had a little oops with my test blocks. 

It helps to pay attention to unit orientation.  I ended up getting reacquainted with my seam ripper.  Paying attention would have been more efficient.

I made these without cutting any triangles.  If you've used any of my patterns, you know I'm partial to not cutting triangles.  Stitch-and-flip methods are my favourites. That led to a last-minute change to the design.  It turns out that using the stitch and flip method to make four units at a time created two pairs of mirror image units instead of four identical units as I had planned.  That's why the two blocks are also mirror images.

With that figured out, I finalized my first draft of the pattern, petted some pretty fabric and started cutting.

I also designed a hug block as a variation.

Unfortunately, adding some of these to the design would have made the fabric and cutting requirements complicated.  Looking at it now, I wish I had figured out how to include it.  Ah well, I can keep it in my back pocket to use in something new later.

I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into my design process.  I'm off to work on some tips and tutorials for the Mystery quilt-along, followed by another date with EQ to see where a few new ideas may lead.

Happy quilting,

Joanne

Woven Kisses is now available in PDF format from my Etsy shop, or in print from your favorite quilt shop.  It includes five sizes, from throw to king.  I think making just 6 squares would make a cute baby quilt too.

Pausing for purples

This summer these pretty strips showed up at the local quilt shop.

These are Crystal sea from Island Batik.  The colors had to come home with me, even though I had no pattern in mind.  That's a rare occurrence.  Usually I can drool over pretty fabric but I don't bring it home unless I have a plan.   That keeps my stash from overflowing its shelves and it keeps my budget balanced (more or less).

I had deadlines to meet and gardening to do so the strip pack sat on the shelf looking pretty for a month or two until one evening, when I couldn't sleep, I fired up EQ to start playing with ideas. By the time I started feeling drowsy, I had the start of an idea sketched out, but it didn't gel until my head hit the pillow.  I jumped back out of bed, found pen and paper and made a note, just in case the idea evaporated while I slept.  Thank goodness I did, because all I could remember in the morning was that I had had an idea, but the details were rather sketchy.

Do you ever have something you want to work on but have to put off because something else really, truly has a higher priority?  I don't know about you, but I find it really motivates me to get that priority dealt with! After a longer wait than I liked, I was finally able to cut into those strips and less than a week later I had a finished quilt top.

This is just a progress shot.  I'm a little surprised to find as I write this post that I don't have a picture of the finished top!  Hmm.  OK, this is where I admit that I hadn't quite finished dealing with that higher priority task.  My guilty conscience probably got in the way of pausing for pictures when I finished the top.  Playing with the purples really did recharge my batteries to finish that deadline project though!